Hubballi: The First Additional Sessions Court, Hubballi, has acquitted all 17 so called “terror suspects” accused of being part of a “sleeper cell” of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) including three doctors, one final year MBBS student and two engineers.

The helpless youth were facing charges of waging war against the country, sedition and manufacture and possession of huge amount of explosives. The court heard the case for seven years and recorded statements of 278 witnesses.

The Thursday’s acquittal by the court followed the prosecution’s failure to prove charges against the youths.

The CID had investigated the case and chargesheeted all the 17 youth during BJP rule in Karnataka. The agency alleged that the accused had links with SIMI and possessed “jihadi” literature.

The CID charge sheet ran into 1,624 pages. The CID probe was headed by then DIG and current Bengaluru additional commissioner of police Alok Kumar. DA Bandekar, public prosecutor said that he is waiting for the judgment copy. “After going through it, I will file an appeal in the high court,” he said.

Syed Sadiq, one of the 17 accused, is out on bail already. Two of the accused, Yahya Kammukutty and Allah Baksh, will walk out of jail once the procedures of acquittal are formalized. The remaining 14 have been charged in various other cases by police from other states.

In the two cases registered in 2008, three charge sheets were filed against 18 persons, including medical students and professionals. Apart from Section 121 (waging, or attempting to wage war against the Government of India.) of the IPC, the accused were charged under Section 122, 124, 153, 379, 465, 471, 201, Section 10(B) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Section 5 of the Explosive Substances Act.

Of the 18 accused, the name of accused no. 11, Sayyad Nayeem of Gurppanapalya, Bengaluru, was dropped subsequently citing lack of evidence, while Syed Sadiq of Gurappanapalya, Bengaluru, was granted bail four years ego. The rest were in prison for the last seven years.

At the time of arrest, Mohammad Asif of Raichur, Mirza Ahmed Baig of Humnabad and Allabaksh Yadwad of Hubballi were pursuing medicine at the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) in Hubballi. The other arrested were from Vijayapura, Dharwad, Bengaluru, Belagavi, Kalaburagi and Udupi in Karnataka, and from different places in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.

After the verdict, the lawyers for the accused, K.M. Shiralli and Ismail Jalagar, said “justice has prevailed”, while Additional Public Prosecutor D.A. Bhandekar said he would study the verdict after getting the certified copy, and give his opinion to his superiors. “The State government will decide on going for an appeal after consulting legal experts,” he said.

In the wake of the “busting” of the sleeper cell, activists of right-wing organizations had set on fire the Hubballi office of the lawyer, who was defending some of the accused.

Hyderabad: The father of one of the five undertrial prisoners gunned down last week by police in Telangana has approached the high court, seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into his killing.

Mohammed Ahmed, father of Viquar Ahmed, filed a petition in the Hyderabad High Court on Wednesday, seeking directions to the Telangana government to order a probe by the CBI.

Alleging that his son and four others were murdered in cold blood by police, Ahmed pleaded that a First Information Report (FIR) be registered against 17 policemen in connection with the April 7 incident.

Ahmed said he on Saturday lodged a complaint at Aler police station in Nalgonda district but the police did not register the case.

Viquar and four others, all accused in the killing of two policemen, were shot dead by a police team near Aler on April 7 while they were being brought to Hyderabad from the Warangal Central Jail.

Police claimed that the policemen escorting the undertrials had to open fire as they tried to snatch weapons and flee.

The families of the slain undertrials and human rights groups have termed the incident “fake” and “stage-managed”. They said since all undertrials were handcuffed and chained to the seats in police vehicle, they would have no chance to snatch weapons.

The state government has ordered the probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT), but the United Muslim Forum, an umbrella grouping of Muslim organisations, has rejected this. The forum is insisting on its demand for probe by the CBI or by a sitting judge of the high court.

The forum organised a protest meeting in Hyderabad late on Tuesday night. Abdul Azeem, a lawyer of Viquar and two others, told the meeting that a petition would be filed, seeking an independent probe.

Addressing the meeting, Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi said if necessary the forum would hire top lawyers from Delhi to fight the case.

New Delhi: Amnesty International India has asked the Telangana government ‘to order an independent criminal investigation into the killing of five undertrials by Telangana police on 7 April. ‘ according to its web site amnesty.org.in.

The Telangana police say the five undertrials – Viqaruddin, Amjad Ali, Mohammed Hanif, Zakir Ali and Izhar Khan – were being taken in a van by 17 policemen from the Warangal central prison to a court in Hyderabad. The police say that the undertrials attempted to overpower the policemen and snatch their assault rifles, and claim they opened fire in self-defense.

Video footage given to Amnesty International India by a journalist appears to show the five undertrials inside the police van after they were killed. All five appear to be handcuffed.

“Impunity for extrajudicial executions is a serious issue in India,” said Abhirr V P, Senior Campaigner at Amnesty International India.“Authorities in Telangana need to urgently conduct an independent criminal investigation into the case to determine if it involved extrajudicial executions disguised as ‘encounter’ killings.”

The five undertrials had been arrested on suspicion of killing two police officials and a state paramilitary official in different incidents between 2007 and 2010, and other offences.

On 1 April, two suspected members of a banned group allegedly shot dead two policemen in Nalgonda, Telangana. The police say that the suspects were killed three days later in an armed exchange with the police, in which another policeman was also killed.

According to guidelines issued by the National Human Rights Commission in 2010, alleged ‘fake encounters’ must be investigated by an independent agency. In September 2014, the Supreme Court stated in the PUCL versus State of Maharashtra case that killings in police encounters require independent investigations.

The UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions require that “[t]here shall be thorough, prompt and impartial investigation of all suspected cases of extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, including cases where…reliable reports suggest unnatural death in the above circumstances.”

JTSA condemns the killing of over 20 woodcutters in the Seshachalam forests and the 5 under-trials in Nalagonda (Telangana). In the first case, reports are already emerging that 7 of those killed, were taken in police custody a day before the encounter. This, along with other details such as bullet injuries on the chest, head and face, contradict the police version of the events. The scale of this violence is unprecedented and suggests how entrenched the culture of impunity is in the state police.

The photographic and video evidence emerging from the police van in which five undertrials – alleged terrorists – were killed by the police party, which was escorting them from Warangal jail to a court in Hyderabad strongly suggests this to be a case of cold-blooded execution in custody. The arms on the dead bodies of these five men – with their hands handcuffed to the seats of the police vehicle – appear to be clearly planted in order to ‘dress’ this up as an exchange of fire. Is it a mere coincidence that the judgment in the case of these five men was due to be pronounced soon?

All efforts must be made to ensure that the post mortem reports and other evidence such as ballistics and the clothes worn by the deceased in both the cases are secured and not tampered with. Time-bound high level judicial probes must be conducted into both the killings. Simultaneously, cases of unnatural death must be filed immediately and special public prosecutors appointed in consultation with the families to prosecute the policemen who participated in the massacres.

The media must follow these cases right through to their logical end in the fixing of accountability and not be satisfied with merely reporting the events as they have taken place.

However, the recent judgment on Hashimpura reveals the problems germane to doing justice to victims of encounters and custodial violence, that are near rampant. While the judgment does not deny the incident of 42 Muslim men being killed in cold blood by the PAC, there were no convictions because of the extremely weak nature of the evidence put forward by the prosecution. There is a need for a clear mechanism whereby either the prosecution or investigating agencies can themselves be held accountable. In heinous crimes such as cold-blooded massacres, how can there be no means to ensure that the investigating agencies and prosecution do their duty in fixing responsibility? Unless such a procedure or mechanism is evolved, justice will always elude the mechanical and cynical application of laws.

The world’s largest democracy witnessed its police force killing 25 of its citizens in two encounters in Andhra Pradesh. “Encounters”, for the uninitiated, are a euphemism for killing unarmed civilians in staged gun battles. The police version of both the alleged encounters is such that it could be laughed-off had they not been about the deaths of civilians.

The police version of the first encounter is that newly formed Red-sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force spotted footprints of the “smugglers” and came across around 100 of them felling trees in the Seshachalam Forest at the foot of the Tirumala Hills. Members of the Task Force challenged them to surrender, but the woodcutters responded by pelting stones. The Task Force in turn responded to the raining stones by firing randomly at the woodcutters, which led to death of 20 of them; the rest ran away. “We fired random shots in self-defence”, a taskforce member told the national daily The Hindu on condition of anonymity.

Logs and slippers neatly arranged!

Yes, you have read it right. A “random firing” in response to stone pelting has resulted in the death of 20 woodcutters. One wonders what could have been the toll had the Force targeted the woodcutters in self-defense. Let us forget how disproportionate it is to use bullets for stones, even if the stones were “raining” down. The alleged encounter took place in a jungle after all and trees could have given ample protection till the Task Force was able to gather itself. But then, Indian law enforcers are used to responding to stones with bullets, for instance in Kashmir in 2010, where 112 people were killed. This included many teenagers and an 11-year-old boy. An uncanny question about this encounter is why the Task Force did not arrest a single person from amongst the remaining 80 or so smugglers. So, not even “dead or alive”, the motto seems to have been “dead or nothing” or “take no prisoners”.

If one finds this one strange, wait till you catch up on the details of the second encounter. This one took place in a jail van, where 17 security force members were taking 5 undertrials from Warangal Jail to a Hyderabad court 150 km away. Yes, you read this right too. This encounter happened inside a jail van with all of the undertrials killed, while unarmed and handcuffed to their seats. The police claims, as per a news channel NDTV that Vikaruddin Ahmed, one of the undertrials, asked to be released in order for him to answer nature’s call. Upon his return he tried to snatch a weapon. The police opened fire when other undertrials allegedly tried to snatch weapons too and this led to all of them getting killed!

How could Vikaruddin Ahmed attempt to snatch a weapon from the security personnel, as undertrials are never let-off alone, not even to use the toilet? As standard operating procedure, security personnel always escort undertrials. Furthermore, even if he did attempt to snatch weaponry, how come a 17-member security force failed to overpower him without firing? Were not remaining four, as per their own claims, still handcuffed and unarmed? Finally, while it is impossible to believe this uncanny and highly improbable story, why exactly did the police need to kill the other four undertrials?

The answers to all these questions are rather simple. The victims in the first case were poor tribal youth caught not only in between lucrative offers of easy money but also interstate (and interlingua) rivalries between the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. That they were not real smugglers but merely coolies for the smuggling mafia that enjoys state patronage on both sides of the border is something immaterial for the police, which could shoot them with impunity but will never dare to touch real smugglers. What should be really bothersome, however, is the way almost all of the Indian media carried the story, parroting the police version, including calling those dead smugglers. Most media houses did not bat an eyelid to ask the obvious: why fire on people pelting stones and how come the Force could not arrest a single person.

Victims of the second encounter came from another persecuted minority of India. They were accused of being members of a local terror outfit Tehreek-Ghalba-e-Islam and were suspected of various attacks on the police in Hyderabad, as well as plotting the murder of Narendra Modi, now Prime Minister of India. They were in jail since 2010. In this case too, the media did the same. A few of reports went to the extent of claiming that the gunning down had foiled a terror plot against Mr. Modi. Only later did the skeletons come tumbling out of the closet. The pictures showing the “terrorists” slain while still being handcuffed to their seats make it nearly impossible for the media to keep parroting the police version.

Security forces eliminating people in custody or with impunity in “encounters” is one of the worst kept secrets of India. The Supreme Court, in its order in Criminal Appeal No.1255 OF 1999, has called such killings nothing less than “state sponsored terrorism”. The Court had done so despite recognising the fact that policemen are indeed required to “take to take drastic action against criminals to protect life and property of the people and to protect themselves against attack.” And yet, it set stringent guidelines to be followed as standard operating procedure in cases of encounters. The guidelines begin from the point of a tip off that can lead to such encounters to video-graphing the post-mortem of individuals that happen to die in the process of police work.

What, however, is a Supreme Court order worth that carries no weight for the police. Let us forget the second encounter, as it is simply too frivolous to be true, and check the facts of the first one. Did the Task Force record the tip-off in any diary? Did it file the mandatory FIR following the encounter and forward it to the court under Section 157 of the Code without any delay? Were any of the guidelines fulfilled so that an independent inquiry could reveal facts about the deaths? One of the guidelines requires an investigation by the Crime Investigation Department or a different police station by an officer at least one rank above the involved officer does not make much sense as officers from whatever stations but same police force investigating an encounter is like asking the accused to investigate himself.

The efficacy of a magisterial inquiry, another guideline set by the Court order, is exposed by the one that was conducted in the custodial killing of Thangjam Manorama, a Manipuri village girl, in 2004. The report of the judicial inquiry commission, led by C. Upendra Singh, retired District and Sessions Judge, Manipur, was submitted in December the same year and was never made public until November 2014. The report indicted personnel of 17 Assam Rifles for “brutal and merciless torture” of Ms. Manorama. Yet this has not resulted in the prosecution of any of the accused and the compensation to the family of the victim. Going by the evidence available, the fate of magisterial enquiries, even those that have fulfilled their mandate, cannot be drastically different in other such cases.

This begets another question: are Indian citizens cursed to live with the danger of getting killed by someone obligated to protect their person and property? They may fear more if they come from vulnerable sections of the society. But should they fear less even if they do not?

Till someone takes the responsibility of reforming the criminal justice system of the country all Indians are in danger. A cruel, violent, and unjust system harbouring criminals in uniform will hurt one and all. The Executive is not interested in any such reform as this system serves its interests well. Will the Judiciary take onus to enforce its orders? And, will the civil society of India understand that having good laws and court orders is not real protection for the marginalized or even the mainstream population in such a criminal justice system?

The author is a Programme Coordinator, Right to Food, AHRC, Hong Kong.

Hyderabad: Five undertrials of Warangal prison facing different charges were shot dead by police on the Warangal-Nalgonda district border in Telangana when they allegedly tried to escape while being brought to a court in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Among the killed was Vikaruddin Ahmed of Hyderabad, who was accused of shooting down two policemen some days ago in city and trying to recruit youth for the terror outfit he had allegedly launched on his own.

A convoy of three vehicles carrying the undertrials left the Warangal Prison at 8.30 a.m. The incident occurred on Hyderabad-Warangal Highway at around 10.25 a.m.
Police sources said, as the vehicles were reaching Kandigadda Thanda, Vikaruddin requested police to stop for a while to attend nature’s call. The five prisoners suddenly lunged at the escort policemen and tried to open fire after snatching a firearm from one of the policemen. Other members of the police party returned fire killing Vikaruddin and four others.

However, rights activists in Telangana have called this encounter a cold blooded murder. They have accused police of fabricating a story to justify the murder.

Other prisoners killed were Zakir, Amjad, Hanif and Izhar Khan. Warangal SP A.K. Jha and Range IG B. Malla Reddy rushed to the spot. The Nalgonda SP Vikramjit Duggal along with Hyderabad Range DIG Y.Gangadhar too arrived there. Hyderabad IGP Naveenchand rushed to the place and inquired as to how the encounter took place.

Later in the afternoon, the bodies were shifted to Area Hospital in Jangaon in Warangal District for post-mortem. As the incident took place inside Nalgonda District, a kilometer away from Warangal border, the Nalgonda police and revenue officials arrived at the hospital for inquest. Bhongir RDO Madhusudhan conducted the inquest.

The incident occurred close on the heels of a gunfight in Nalgonda district on Saturday in which two alleged members of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and a policeman were killed.

Yadagiri: Police in Yadagiri have denied reports by some media groups that an alleged SIMI operative lived in the city or that NIA officers and Andhra Police had come looking for him.

“We have no information either about the reported existence of a SIMI operative in the district or the reported visit of NIA officers or Andhra Police to the district,” Superintendent of Police M Mutturaya clarified.

Earlier, a Kannada TV channel reported that Mohammad alias Guddu, a SIMI operative, had lived in Yadagiri for months and had purchased 20 mobile phone SIM cards. The report also said that the NIA officer visited some places, including a cloth store here.

The report came after a 17-year-old boy, said to be a Sangh Parivar activist, posting as a Muslim on Twitter claimed Bengaluru blast responsibility and threatened to carry out more such blasts.

Hyderabad: MaulanaAbdul Aleem Islahi has denied charges by Hyderabad Police that his son Mohtasim Billah motivated and was helping two allged SIMI activists from Maharashtra to go to Afghanistan for Jihad training.

MaulanaIslahi told reporters Friday that after failing in its previous attempts, police is again trying to implicate his son in false cases. He said the police is targeting his son repeatedly ever since Mohtasim’s brother Mujahid was shot dead by Gujarat IPS officer Narender Amin near the Andhra Pradesh DGP’s office in Hyderabad in 2004.

“From that time onwards, when Mohtasim was not even 16, police has filed several cases. But he was acquitted in all cases. Only two cases are left. The judgment in one of them is coming this month-end. It appears they want to keep up the pressure,” he told media.

“They killed my elder son in cold blood and they are now targeting my younger son.”

In 2004, Billah’s brother Mujahid Saleem was killed when a team of Gujarat Police opened fire in Hyderabad as he tried to resist their attempts to arrest Maulana Naseeruddin, a renowned Islamic scholar in Hyderabad, who was arrested and later acquitted of all terror charges on January 12, 2010, after being poisoned for more than five years he in a Gujarat jail.

Mohtasim also claimed that he is innocent. He alleged that police were trying to frame false charges against him.

”I am going to college and signing every month in court records for previous cases filed against me. How can they say I am absconding?” asked 24-year-old Mohtasim, who is a M.Tech student.

“I don’t even have money to pay my college fee, and the police says I offered to finance them.” he said.

Police Wednesday arrested two youth on their arrival in Hyderabad from Maharashtra.

It claimed that Mohtasim had motivated them during their visit to the city last month to go to Afghanistan to get training from the Al Qaeda in order to wage jihad in India to establish an Islamic State.

Mohtasim had even offered financial support to the duo for visa processing, police said.

Shah Mudassir alias Talha (25) and Shoaib Ahmed Khan alias Pusad Shoaib (24), both residents of Maharashtra, are said to be members of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

According to police, the SIMI activists through social networks came in contact with two citizens of Pakistan and one of Afghanistan.

Police have not yet arrested Mohtasim. Police Commissioner Mahender Reddy Friday told reporters that they are seeking custody of the two accused for further questioning.

The police chief refused to comment on Maulana Islahi’s allegations.

“The investigations are on and on the basis of evidence we will take action. We will conduct investigations with open mind. Till proved otherwise every person is innocent. We will go very very professionally in the investigations,” he said.

“We will not arrest anybody if there is no or insufficient evidence. Once the evidence is there, we will not hesitate to arrest anyone,” said the commissioner.

The top cop said it would be difficult at this stage to say who else are involved in the case.